Christie Blake, of Lunenburg, Mass., shopping at Sears with her sister-in-law, Stacey Moore of Danbury, uses her cellphone to check for the lowest prices, Black Friday, Nov. 23, 2012. She determined she got the best deal available.

Nazia Asif, left, and her sister-in-law Nellam Zia, both of Danbury, have quite a haul of merchandise after just two hours of shopping. The pair arrived at the Danbury Fair Mall at 6:30a.m. to take advantage of Black Friday bargains, Nov. 23, 2012.

Johnathan Santayana, 16, left, and his brother E.J., 12, of Newtown, nap after a morning shopping for Black Friday bargains at the Danbury Fair Mall. They arrived at the mall at about 2 a.m. after a midnight stop at Best Buy, Friday, Nov. 23, 2012.

Johnathan Santayana, 16, left, and his brother E.J., 12, of Newtown, nap after a morning shopping for Black Friday bargains at the Danbury Fair Mall. They arrived at the mall at about 2 a.m. after a midnight stop at Best Buy, Friday, Nov. 23, 2012.

DANBURY -- Waving signs and chanting, about 50 people held a Black Friday protest outside -- and briefly, inside -- the Walmart store on Newtown Road, using the year's busiest shopping day to advance claims that the retail giant exploits its workers.

"Everything they sell is from China," said Fran O'Rourke, one of the protesters. "They want to pay people like they're Chinese workers. This is America."

"It's a microcosm of what corporations are doing today," said Mike Toto of Occupy Danbury. "They're restructuring workers' rights."

So were activists like Rich Frascone, who is the host of the local cable TV show, "Who's Telling the Truth?"

"These people are being exploited," Frascone said of the Walmart workers. "Let's take the money from the corporations and give it to the people who actually create the profits."

The protest at the Danbury Walmart was part of a national effort to make activists' views of the world's biggest retailer's policies known. The protesters said they took the action in support of Walmart employees, who they said are underpaid, overworked, and given inadequate health benefits.

And, protesters said, because these workers end up needing food stamps to buy groceries, and enrolling on Medicaid because Walmart pays so little, the store chain is draining the American economy.

"The burden falls on us," Frascone said. "We're subsidizing the Walmarts of the world."

Local store officials declined to comment. But in a press statement released Friday, David Tovar, the chain's vice president for corporate communications, said the number of protests being reported at Walmart stores had been "grossly exaggerated" by the United Food and Commercial Workers International, which has been trying the unionize Walmart.

"We are aware of a few dozen protests at our stores today," Tovar said in the statement. "The number of associates that have missed their scheduled shift today is more than 60 percent less than Black Friday last year."

Tovar said the organizers of the protests -- a group called OURWalmart -- do not speak on behalf of the 1.3 million Walmart employees.

"We had our best Black Friday ever," Tovar said. "Press reports are now exposing what we have said all along -- the large majority of protesters aren't even Walmart workers."

Police in Milford broke up another Walmart protest there, after more than two dozen health care workers assembled outside the store.

The Milford protesters, members of the health care union for the nearby West River Healthcare Center, marched outside the super store for about 15 minutes, shouting "Down with Walmart, up with the union," until police arrived.

Confronted by two officers, protest organizer Jesse Martin agreed to move the protest to the street, more than 100 yards from the store.

A Milford Walmart employee, who said she was afraid of being fired if she gave her name, gave a restrained fist pump as the protesters arrived and began handing out flyers.

In Danbury, the protest began at 11 a.m. with a march up the parking lot to the storefront, where Walmart staff and members of the Danbury Police Department told demonstrators to leave, claiming they were creating a disturbance on private property.

The protesters then stashed their signs and pamphlets and walked into the store. Local activist Justin Molito, holding his 4-year-old son Pike's hand, began shouting out a statement of support for Walmart workers inside the store, with his fellow activists repeating his words with equal fervor and volume.

While Molito was making his statement, police took him by the arm and marched him out of the store, with the supporters following in their wake.

The Danbury protesters spent the rest of the morning on the sidewalk that runs along Newtown Road, waving signs and getting the occasional car honk of support from the people driving by.

Not everyone at the Danbury store was sympathetic, including Sid Brown, of North Salem, N.Y.

"If people don't want to work in a place, they don't have to," Brown said. "They tried to bring the union in where I used to work. Nobody wanted it."

"I saw it," another man, who asked not to be named, said of the Danbury protest. "I didn't really pay attention to it."

Stephanie Catania expressed full support of the protesters' right to hold their demonstration.

"It is our constitutional right," she said. And, Catania said she was sympathetic to the issue involved as well.